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Smaller, rural hospitals may be quicker and more efficient at implementing surgical safety initiatives than their larger, urban counterparts, and are capable of providing a standard of surgical care that is at par with major hospitals that provide a comprehensive array of care services, according to an 18-month series of studies led by researchers from the University of Louisville Department of Surgery.

An examination of 15,000 bariatric surgery patients in Michigan finds that the frequency of serious complications is relatively low, and is inversely associated with hospital and surgeon procedural volume, according to a study published in JAMA .
With rates of bariatric surgery increasing over the last decade, it has become the second most common abdominal operation in the United States.

Lauran Neergaard, AP
The Food and Drug Administration allows red blood cells to be stored for 42 days, and hospitals almost always use the oldest in their refrigerators first to ensure none expires. The age of the blood a patient receives depends on how much the hospital has of that type on a given day.

Michelle Roberts, AP
Master Sgt. Todd Nelson lost his right eye and ear in a flash when a car bomb in Afghanistan exploded, sending fire up his arm and over his head. Although it's taken years of painstaking work, the military has given him a bright blue eye and ear lightly freckled and pinked from summer sun.

School-aged children who undergo cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) during surgery for less complicated congenital heart defects do not appear to suffer any impairments in neurocognitive abilities, such as intelligence, memory, motor skills and behavior. Researchers from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, in a study in the August issue of Pediatrics , reported on neuropsychological effects after surgery for acyanotic heart defects.

As the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education seeks to improve patient care by further limiting the hours worked by medical residents, the Journal of Surgical Research has published a new study reporting that outcomes in two common surgeries – appendectomy and laparoscopic cholecystectomy – were similar among residents who had worked less than 16 hours and those who had worked more than 16 hours.

Contrary to the researchers' predictions, detection of salty, sweet, sour and bitter tastes appeared to be enhanced rather than reduced following heart bypass surgery. The unexpected findings, they note, might be at least partially explained by hunger after fasting around the time of surgery.
Nearly half a million coronary artery bypass surgeries are performed in the U.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched the e-market arm of the robot technology.
APL scientists and engineers developed the technology behind DARPA Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009 program, an ambitious effort over four years to create a prosthetic arm until there was an eclipse of the Second World War device and cable hook Most used by amputees.

PDI, Inc.’s Chlorascrub™ is a 3.15% Chlorhexidine Gluconate (w/v) and 70% Isopropyl Alcohol (v/v) solution that guards against pathogens like most bacteria, fungi/yeast and viruses, making it a choice for pre-operative and pre-injection skin preparation. The solutions comes in a swab, swab stick and maxi swabstick.

Bowie-Dick test card
Valisafe, the new sterility assurance division of Medisafe America, offers a complete range of new decontamination process and sterility assurance products to ensure simple, continuous and consistent monitoring of every decontamination and sterilization cycle, as well as every item you process.

Kim Archer
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — The room full of doctors on the large TV screen spoke over one another, enthusiastically and in Arabic.
"We want to know your needs and how we can help you," Dr. Stanley Grogg, interim provost and dean of the Oklahoma State University College of Health Sciences in Tulsa, told them.

CARY, Ill., July 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Oral care helps critical care patients defend against ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), a common, often fatal and very costly hospital-acquired infection.
According to research cited by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), hospital mortality of ventilated patients who develop VAP is as high as 46 percent and each incident adds an estimated cost of $40,000 to a typical hospital admission.

Daniel Woolls, Associated Press Writer
Oscar,center, a man who underwent a full-face transplant in April, poses beside Dr. Joan Barret, fourth from left, and surrounded by doctors as he appears in public for the first time in a news conference at the Vall d'Hebron Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, Monday, .

Lindsey Tanner, AP Medical Writer
CHICAGO (AP) — More than 70,000 children and teens go to the emergency room each year for injuries and complications from medical devices, and contact lenses are the leading culprit, the first detailed national estimate suggests.
About one-fourth of the problems were things like infections and eye abrasions in contact lens wearers.